A new national report is sounding the alarm over a growing and largely hidden crisis in Canadian health care: thousands of patients dying before they ever receive the treatment they were promised.
According to SecondStreet.org, at least 23,746 Canadians died on medical wait-lists between April 2024 and March 2025, a rise of three per cent from the previous year. The think tank has now recorded more than 100,000 wait-list deaths since 2018, though the real total is likely even higher. Several provinces provided only partial information, and Alberta along with parts of Manitoba offered none at all.
SecondStreet.org compiled the figures through freedom of information requests submitted to more than 40 health agencies across the country. The findings paint a stark picture: while governments routinely publish inspection results for minor issues in restaurants, no province publicly reports deaths that occur while patients wait for surgery or essential diagnostics. “It’s quite hypocritical,” said Colin Craig, the organization’s president.
Behind these numbers are devastating personal stories. Among them is Manitoba’s Debbie Fewster, a mother of three who was told she needed urgent heart surgery. She was expected to get it within three weeks—yet she waited more than two months and died on Thanksgiving Day. Her case only came to light because her family spoke publicly. Similar tragedies have been documented across Canada, including the deaths of teenagers Laura Hillier and Finlay van der Werken in Ontario, and Alberta’s Jerry Dunham, who died waiting for a pacemaker.
The report shows that Ontario recorded the highest number of wait-list deaths—10,634, followed by Quebec (6,290) and British Columbia (4,620). Smaller provinces also reported notable totals, from Nova Scotia’s 727 to Prince Edward Island’s 178, though Manitoba’s partial data only captured 215 deaths.
Most of these deaths occurred among patients waiting for procedures considered “non-life-saving,” but still essential—cataract surgeries, hip and knee replacements, and MRIs. In other cases, patients were awaiting potentially life-saving care, including heart procedures and cancer treatments. Ontario reported 355 deaths among patients waiting for cardiac surgeries, with at least 90 of those patients waiting longer than medical guidelines recommend. Wait times ranged from a few days to nearly nine years.
The report stresses that even procedures not seen as urgent can have serious consequences if delayed. Those waiting for cataract surgery may lose their independence due to vision loss, while patients awaiting joint replacements often become immobile, putting them at risk of falls or blood clots.
The issue, the report argues, is not funding. Canada’s public health-care spending reached a historic $244 billion between 2024 and 2025, with per-capita spending nearly tripling since the mid-1990s. Yet despite this, Canada still has fewer doctors, hospital beds and MRI machines per person than many comparable universal health systems—and significantly longer wait times.
To address the crisis, the report calls for several reforms. Chief among them is properly tracking and publicly disclosing wait-list deaths. A 2021 poll found that 79 per cent of Canadians believe governments should report how long patients wait and what happens to them. The report also recommends adopting activity-based funding to reward hospitals for treating more patients, expanding partnerships with private clinics at lower cost, allowing a mix of public and private care, and introducing an EU-style “Cross-Border Directive” so patients can seek treatment elsewhere and be reimbursed up to the provincial equivalent.
The findings underscore a stark reality: thousands of Canadians are dying not because treatment was impossible, but because they simply didn’t reach the front of the line in time.